


Wild Geese

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Kissing, Love, M/M, Marriage, Romance, Schmoop, Slice of Life, Superhusbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:59:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2287631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You do not have to be good. </i><br/><i>You do not have to walk on your knees</i><br/><i>for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.</i><br/><i>You only have to let the soft animal of your body</i><br/><i>love what it loves. </i><br/> <br/><span class="small">(( mary oliver ))</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Geese

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeddyLaCroix (ReadyPlayerZero)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReadyPlayerZero/gifts).



> This is what happens when I read poetry and then am given an hour to fuck around and do whatever between the arrival of one deadline and the commencement of yet another project with yet another deadline. Someone probably needs to tie down my hands to stop me from writing nonsense. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, and overly-indulgent, with all sorts of _feelings_ , but you know what? Sometimes we all need that.
> 
> For [TeddyLaCroix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/readyplayerzero/), who said sharing was best, and shining was the goal; I managed the former, at least ;)
> 
> The title, the summary, and basically the whole thing is credit to the inimitable [Mary Oliver](http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/geese/geese.html).

The key to this thing is not accepting that they cannot change the past.

The key to this thing is wrapping up tight inside that fact and _knowing_ , bone-deep, that no matter what: the future is for _them_.

So they make it a thing, a habit; a routine—a touchstone. They make a point of it, when they wake in the morning, the afternoon, the middle of the night: when eyes open back to a world that’s real, no matter what horrors they leave behind—when they wake, they find each other.

When they come back, they seek out home.

And the truth is that even in the darkest times, even when it got harder than Steve thought he could bear, Bucky was a warmth, is a warmth: a heat indescribable, unnamable—he stokes embers in the concaves of Steve’s chest, Steve’s veins and when he was gone Steve shivered harder than he’d ever done; when he was lost, Steve barely felt the ice he crashed into, for the way it already lived in every corner of him, every cell—when he was found again, unknowing, he was still so _known_ , because for the first time in all those years there was fire in Steve’s chest again, there was life there, and it moved with the pounding of his heart for every punch, for every block, for every tamped-down need to reach out and _touch_ —

And after the dust settles, after Bucky learns his face from two pasts and grows to recognize it in the present as something that can fit; after Steve watches the mirror at his shoulder and learns to do the same, not for Bucky’s reflection but for his _own_ : after they’ve sat with what it means to despair and what it means to simply _feel_ ; what it means to despair within arm’s reach of your everything, of the heart made flesh and watch how despair couldn’t suffocate, not anymore; after they find each other again, and remember what the ground feels like when it’s steady because they ground one another, and _they’re_ steady somehow, like this; after.

After, in the dim light, tasting rain on the air and laughing soft between them, when Bucky turns and says _Let’s go west_ ; after, when Steve just looks at him, takes in the gentle lines of his face, the flush of his skin, the way he seems to emanate _hope_ and it’s more beautiful than the sunrise, than the revelation of life and death; after, once Sam takes the shield, and the world is in safe hands that don’t have to be theirs—after.

They go west, but that doesn’t matter.

The _where_ never mattered.

And now: now, what they have is their own. Now, what they are is each other’s, and no one else’s. Now they are here, and they are soft: they are fragile, and they love beyond all reckoning beneath the wide blue sky, and the world keeps turning around that fact, around their bodies and the way they breathe in time, and Steve likes to think, some days, that the world knows—that the universe at its core felt the loss of Bucky in Steve’s heart and conspires, here and now, to keep them, so as never to know that ache again.

Steve’s kinda a sap, according to Bucky. But that’s okay.

Steve sometimes wakes up in the morning and feels Bucky’s head against his chest, Bucky’s frame lined up at his side, Bucky’s arm around him—so much _warmth_ —and sometimes Steve thinks that he’s died, and this is a gift at the end of it all because it is just that unbearably _good_ , the weight of it beneath his ribs; so fine: he’s a sap.

He’s a sap, and he couldn’t care less: not if it means that he gets _this_.

Because Bucky’s eyes are closed, lips parted, but his chest betrays him, too quick in its rises and falls. And Steve’s pressing a grin to Bucky’s open mouth, slipping a tongue between his teeth and doing his best to drown, to fall into Bucky and never pull back, never get out, and Bucky’s arms slide around Steve’s shoulders and drag him up to sprawl, chest to chest on top of Bucky as they arch, as Bucky lifts up just so and deepens the kiss until Steve feels it, feels the weight of it and the joy of it and the need there, so strong in the line of his throat, the pump of his blood—Bucky kisses him like Steve imagines the world might burn: beautiful, consuming, searing.

All things.

And Steve’s a sap, sometimes, because this is how he wakes; this is how _they_ wake, now: quiet. Perfect. 

Steve remembers church, with his mother, sometimes; Steve remembers the feeling of peace he’d get, now and again—when he was young; too young to think that peace away.

He’s not young, anymore, but he _is_ whole: and this, now—this is peace.

Bucky’s pressing all the lines of him against Steve’s lines in return, the length of his frame moving languid, meeting Steve for every gasp of lungs and roll of hips, and they’re content to keep this: content to take it no further for now, just to relish this lazy, lucid stretch of moments where they are everything under the dawn—where they can appreciate the differences, the shards of irreplicability before they are everything all over again, cast brand-new in the fully-risen sun.

Steve’s eyes slip closed, and his breath comes out like a gust, like a sigh when he feels Bucky’s right hand press against his left, feels Bucky’s fingers slot into place between Steve’s own as he draws Steve’s touch upward along the line of his sternum, to the bow of his mouth, kissing every fingertip until he lingers: until he meets Steve’s eyes and tongues around the circle of gold beneath Steve’s knuckle. 

“S’a lucky guy,” Bucky breathes, heavy and vibrating with the same kind of punch-drunk bliss that Steve is convinced makes up the blood inside their veins—Bucky breathes against him, eyes bright: _so_ bright, and it will never be less than a revelation, won’t ever shine as something other than a miracle of god that they are here: that after everything, _they_ get _this_. 

“Goddamned lucky sonuvabitch,” Bucky’s breath clouds up the sheen on the ring, but the words themselves gleam more than enough on their own: “The man who gets to wake up next to you.”

“Eh, I dunno,” Steve shrugs, lips quirking up, and his heart’s pumping hard, his heart’s casting wide to hold Bucky’s body as close as he can; and Bucky fits against him, sinks into the hollow places in the shape of him, the soul of him and makes him solid, makes him full and real again where he wonders, sometimes—where he doubts.

With Bucky, though, there is no doubt.

There’s no room for doubt in so much joy. 

Steve lifts Bucky’s free hand, then: sucks the metal of Bucky’s third finger on the left into his mouth and doesn’t blink, doesn’t breath as he stares all the words of a time before, a time not yet known: all the things that letters can’t fit around with any hope of knowing, of _being_ —he pulls back, watching still, before he dips his head, just a little, just enough, and presses lips to the elevated rim of the matching gold band that Steve slipped on to that finger in hope, but that _Bucky_ had fused to the hand itself—never moving, never wavering, never lost:

_To the end of the line, punk._

To the end, beyond longing, beyond losing: long after ashes and dust.

Steve runs his mouth over that vow and breathes, just breathes, and remembers that this is real: this is the world he wakes up to, and it’s a wonder and it’s impossible, except that it is _true_ when he whispers, when he sees that ring and knows what it means and knows that Bucky is his, is _his_ , dear _god_ —

“I dunno,” Steve whispers, because the swell of something boundless, something crystal-like and sheer inside his chest presses out the air, because it’s necessary: because this thing expands unending—this thing means _more_. 

“I can think of luckier.”

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com), where you can poke me and tell me to write/not write, etc. I'm also thinking about doing open prompts for the end of the year over there (I like winter, and New Year's), so if that trips your trigger, come say hey.


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